by Maria Mutch
This time, she thought, she would clean before leaving, she would right things, and dust and wipe surfaces, she would make the small gestures of erasure she had previously resisted. She would, she thought, be like other people, perform the habits of others and therefore be more commonplace. This was the way to manage time, which had begun to do strange things the moment that she understood her brother was gone.
Time at the beginning had moved so slowly that she thought she might go mad—the first few days seemed to occupy an entire month as she waited for phone calls and messages and walked her body along the edge of an invisible circle—but now the accelerations left her breathless and wanting to be home with Ellena and the dogs and the mountains. She no longer wanted to be in the portal that was Seth’s apartment; she had had enough of sitting in the posture of waiting, feeling a key being turned tighter and tighter in her back and which only made her want to smoke and drink twice as much. She folded the sweater she had left on the floor and then opened her suitcase on the edge of the bed.
She didn’t pack, however, or clean. She put on her big black coat and her boots and left the apartment. When she reached the sidewalk, she felt the sleet fall to her hair and burn her cheeks. She walked north and then west. Having memorized the address before tearing the card up, she strode along, past the butcher, the vinyl record store, the wine shops. On the corner, she saw the tailor that had been in that spot for five decades, with a window display of two headless torsos in dust-covered checkered vests that had been unchanged for as long as she could remember. People walked past her, tucking their chins into the tops of their coats or else pretended to be unmoved by the stinging crystals, and they were different people, a panoply of size and shape and colour, and yet they were the same people, the ones she was sure had always been striding along the sidewalk or darting away to cross the street or dipping into the markets. A few glanced at her, most did not, and all avoided touching her, and she them, no one closing the gap no matter how close the bodies came. The sun was nearly down and replaced by the light coming from the stores and signs and cars, simply a different kind of light, but the same, and the same dark, unseeable lid laid over the whole works, impenetrable and vast.
She realized she must have walked past Miriam’s doorway, so she backtracked and then saw the discreet sign, whose subtlety amazed her, in the basement window of an old walkup, between a violin- and bowmaker and a taxidermist, and beneath an accountant. She stood for a moment, glancing up and down the street, then went down the steps, which were damp with a skiff of snow on top. When she reached the black door, she stood looking at it, wondering if she really wanted to press the buzzer. The door seemed secretive, reticent, and the sign in the middle of it so small and strangely elegant, almost as if it wished to go unnoticed. Miriam, in a plain script. She half expected to need a password. She wondered, too, how Ira and Miriam had truly crossed paths, and she now doubted his story.
“Hullo there. We don’t have an appointment, do we?”
Sabine startled and looked up to see a woman standing at the top of the steps and then moving down them, her gloved hand sliding along the railing as she descended. She wore a large purple faux fur coat, tall black boots, and an enormous grey scarf that hid her chin and made her dark eyes seem to peer over a wall. Her long hair, almost the same colour as Sabine’s but well-kept, was piled up on her head and adorned with snow. She came to stand beside Sabine in the confined space in front of the door. “Well?” she said, clasping her hands together, and Sabine was intimidated, despite seeing that Miriam carried over one wrist an absurdly small purse in lime green that seemed to suggest a sense of humour.
Miriam smiled, and Sabine thought she looked older than she had just a moment ago. Also, her expensive earrings didn’t match. The voice was deep and resonant. “I usually go by referrals and appointments.”
Sabine didn’t say anything.
“Who do you know that I know?” Miriam smiled patiently, or perhaps impatiently with a veneer of patience.
Sabine couldn’t tell; finally she managed to say, “Ira.” She suddenly realized she didn’t know his last name.
“Ira,” she said again.
“Who? That’s okay, never mind. I’m Miriam. Just Miriam.” She extended her gloved hand and Sabine shook it. “You have a name? And a question? Or a quest?”
Sabine couldn’t seem to form the sentence from the emotions that welled up in her. She could smell Miriam’s perfume. Someone bellowed from the end of the block. A drunk, probably, but Miriam didn’t turn her gaze away. She waited, raising her eyebrows that had been neatly drawn a touch higher, Sabine could see, than her natural ones.
“Yeah. I got a question or two. I’d like a session. Is that what you call it? Like a therapist?”
Miriam gave a low laugh. “Sure.” She removed her key from her purse, opened the door, and walked in. Sabine followed her into the vestibule and spoke into the space between them, looking at Miriam’s back.
“First question I have,” she said softly. “Did she ever love me?”
Bait and Switch
Molly crossed her long legs, and she realized they were aching. The teacup that had been offered to her, and which contained chamomile and honey, steamed on a side table under the concentrated light of a tasseled lamp. The room was otherwise dim, but she could see that the walls were crisply white, as were the bookshelves and door and window frames. In contrast, the sofas and chairs were upholstered in shades of deep red with velvet cushions. Paperback novels from the fifties, along with some self-help books, were stacked up on the midcentury coffee and side tables, and close to her teacup there was a large purple ashtray, as gleaming and amorphous as an organ, perfectly unused. Miriam sat down in an armchair across from her and folded one leg under, resting her index finger along her chin. She had been explaining something of her method to Molly while she prepared the tea.
“The typical methods were no good. Tarot cards are not my jam, as the kids say—they have limitations, so I decided to make my own cards. Why not, right? Then I got them professionally made. I use a system of shapes, letters, numbers, and colours.” She picked up a pair of glasses from a side table and put them on. “I’m a synesthete. Know what that is?”
Molly smiled. “Sure. Like some people hear colours or see music. Different senses get mixed together. Someone hears a sound and they taste cinnamon or whatever. I have a little bit of it myself—the letter A is always red for me. Threes are yellow. Like that. Since I was a kid.”
“Well now, you win a prize! So, what people want to know turns up as colours, shapes, numbers. People’s auras say something. Their words. I shuffle the cards, very similar to using tarot, and I lay them out in a pattern. At first, just a few, then I add more as we go deeper. If a triangle turns up, it could mean a romantic triangle, or it could mean that a situation is a big deal spiritually. Because of the number three being king. Right? A square might be a person’s home life, a half circle might be their birth, a black solid circle might be someone’s death or near-death experience. Hexagons are usually secrets—I love those. Numbers come into it, too. And I rely a lot on what the person says. Just because I’m a psychic—or at least that’s what people call me—doesn’t mean I know everything. I rely on you, actually, to do the knowing.”
“You don’t consider yourself a psychic?”
“I’m Miriam.” She smiled. “Like medium, isn’t it? Empathic. An empathic transgendered synesthete. Just a little tagline for this life. A loaner. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. And all that.” She put her fingertips together. “You ready?”
Molly held her teacup close. “I suppose I’m a little nervous. What do I do first?”
Miriam retrieved the cards from a wooden box on a side table and sat down again. “I start with a few questions and then shuffle. But I already got a sense of something from you, the moment you called me. It was a good connection. I saw some things. First one, I think, is an early loss. Big one. Your mother or
father, or both?”
Molly nodded and held up two fingers.
“My condolences.” Miriam shuffled the cards and shut her eyes for a moment. “You have a condition. Can’t tell if it’s connected or not. Something inherited?”
“Seizures. Not inherited, as far as I know.”
Miriam laid out three cards in a triangle. “Neither of those things is why, exactly, you’re here. There’s a space. Someone else missing. Absent, gone …” She flicked her long fingers in the air. “There’s a complication—it’s not a new thing?”
“No, not really.” Molly felt distinctly ill and took a sip of her tea. Her head was aching and before she’d stepped into Miriam’s apartment, a light had flashed in her peripheral vision. She uncrossed her legs and shifted in her chair. “I just want to know where he is. If he’s alive or not.” She felt sweat appear along her forehead. “I’m a little embarrassed, I think. I haven’t seen him for a long time. A decade, actually.” She gave a small laugh. “I don’t know why I’m so concerned now.”
Miriam had laid out other cards while Molly was talking. She examined them, moved one, then looked at the arrangement. A slight smile appeared on her lips. “My, my.”
Molly cleared her throat. Miriam handed her the remaining cards and said, “Shuffle those well. Then hand them back to me.” Molly took the cards and felt the weight of them. The backs were deep blue with a single gold dot in the centre. She shuffled and pictured Seth, Raf, Stella, and Augustin, and a wave of love passed through her. She thought of Sabine standing in her living room, with her black coat and bedraggled hair and her news. The fragility of certain connections, and their tenacity. She handed the cards back.
Miriam removed another three cards from the top and placed them within her arrangement. Molly had been trying to prevent herself from looking too long at the array, but she looked now. “Lot of hexagons,” she said suddenly.
Miriam looked up at her and nodded. “Doesn’t mean I can see all your insides, don’t worry. Only what you show me. And I don’t dig. No reason to. I like to protect people’s business, if you know what I mean. You mentioned being embarrassed …”
Molly rubbed her forehead. “He’s, you know, long past. And it was always wobbly, anyway.”
Miriam watched the cards. “I see a lot of people, all with the same condition. Sexual love with a little putrefaction in it. Just my observation. No offense. And something I like to call stickiness. Maybe somebody else would call it karma. You get your karma tangled up with somebody else’s, and it’s not so easy to undo.”
“No. It’s not really rational, is it?”
Miriam made a sound. “Oh, honey, I don’t think you’re all that enamoured of the rational, but either way we are long past that.” She arranged the cards in three rows of seven, a neat rectangle. She held the deck out to Molly and instructed her to take one and give it to her. She looked at the card without showing it to Molly and put it face-down on the table.
“Uh-oh. Why’d you do that?”
Miriam chuckled. “No need to worry. But I have some bad news, which is I can’t answer your main question. Others are crowding it out. So the thing is, I don’t know where he is or his, um, present condition.” She looked over the top of her glasses. “So the question then is: Why are you really here?”
“What do you mean?”
Miriam waited.
Molly sighed. Her head felt so strange, and familiar. “I’ve been feeling a seizure coming on for days. … The piece I’m working on. Is it my last? I’m looking for solid ground and not finding it. My husband has been seeing someone else. … Not really new to either one of us, which maybe you already know. And my children don’t know who their father is. … I lied.” She stopped a moment. “I’ve never said that out loud. I’ve worked so hard, and then, I wonder … This man, he had a sister. I’ve missed her, too. Another thing I’ve never said. … My parents. My dear parents. … Grandfather, who I dearly loved.” Tears formed in her eyes and she put her hands to her face. “My god, my children. My brain is gathering its forces. That’s what I call it. I feel in some strange place. And yet I don’t want to let go.” She caught her breath and spoke through her fingers.
“Miriam,” she whispered, “I’m so grateful. The beauty of this place. I don’t want to go.”
Miriam sat back in her chair, crossed her legs again and leaned her head into her hand. She regarded Molly with a gaze that seemed tender but regal. “But you must, my dear. In the end, it’s what we all do. Everything’s a loaner. And unless you can step out of what the clock says, you know”—she folded her hands in her lap—“I think your time is up.”
Questionnaire
What if falling is beautiful, what if falling is useful?
What if the place I land in is as good as the place I was in before?
What if there is no real falling and no real death, what if we go on forever?
And by “we” I mean the underlying energy, not the thinker. What if the thinker dissolves but something else remains?
* * *
And the missing. What do we do with them?
Posters in the grocery stores. Once upon a time, the sides of milk cartons. Now websites. Collated reams of them, attempts to organize the dispersal. The ones who got away, the ones taken.
Last seen here.
Last seen wearing.
Call this number if you have information.
Information, that’s the thing. You wonder who has it. Desire for.
The Window
Which was broken for a reason he couldn’t imagine. Seth woke on the rug of his living room floor beside clusters of cereal and other unidentifiable crumbs, some hairs. A blanket was wrapped partially around him, with a cushion from the sofa under his head. From this vantage, cracks revealed themselves. Along the ceiling one appeared in the shape of a question mark. In the corner of the living room a vertical line ran from floor to ceiling as if the two perpendicular walls had come apart, and which he had seen so many times it was no longer noticeable.
But the window was another matter, with cold air rushing in from a hole toward the bottom left corner with slats that ran jaggedly from its outline. The hole was the size of what? His mind searched for the image of the projectile and could only come up with a baseball. But he was not an owner of baseballs. Had the object come from inside his apartment, for instance, or outside? Unlikely outside as he was five floors up and the adjacent building had been torn down and was just beginning to be rebuilt. Or could it? Nothing lay on his floor, except for him, the blanket, and, neatly lined up in a row beneath the coffee table, two empty wine bottles, a plastic tumbler and his phone. He shoved off the blanket and checked his body, which was naked, and sore in the diffuse manner of his worst hangovers, his stomach uneasy.
It was possible that another body lay on his bed, so he got up unsteadily and stood looking around the room for coats, boots, scarves. Glasses or plates or an ashtray. He heard something, but maybe he imagined it. He listened like an animal, suddenly alert and still. Then decided, reflexively, to check his phone where there were three texts but nothing illuminating. A sound from the bedroom made him put his phone down and walk to the bedroom doorway. Relief flooded him as he saw the rumpled, empty bed, the noise having come from another apartment.
He felt consternation, however, when he registered himself in the mirror that hung on the closet door. He stared at the man, at the haggard posture, how old he looked in spite of being muscular. Tattoos adorned the arms and chest: mandalas, a bear, complicated serpents, and Sanskrit for a peace he had never possessed. Then, on the right hand, across the knuckles and fingers, bloodied cuts that he also hadn’t felt. He looked down, not quite believing what he saw or that he felt little pain until he touched his hand. He opened the closet, found the first aid kit and the gauze bandages inside it. After wrapping the wounds on his hand, he got dressed and went to stand again in the living room, looking at the hole in the window and relishing the cold that came through it.
A Knock
When he opened the door, he found the old man standing there. “How are you, Ira?”
Ira had a cane, though it was mostly for effect, to underscore his often amused expression or sometimes he gestured with it. “Good, good. But the question I have is … how are you?”
Seth rubbed his hair. “I’m all right.”
Ira nodded, looking quickly past Seth’s shoulder into the apartment. “I’m asking because of the ruckus.” His head stood out from his neck a little more than usual. His sweater was large and loose on his frame, his pants were thin at the knees, but he wore a button-down shirt in soft blue with a sharp, spotless collar.
“Ruckus. Uh, I’m sorry about that.” He rubbed his face again, his chin. “Funny question, but was someone here?”
Ira raised his eyebrows. “You’re asking me? I’m an old man. I don’t know anything. I just heard something last night and you know, it got me wondering. Thought I might see if you’re okay.” His eyes darted over Seth’s shoulder again.
“Want to come in? I can make coffee.”
“Oh, no, no.” Ira stood up taller and put both hands on his cane. “I’m on my way to a breakfast date. Deirdre. She has a pension, if you can believe it, and more than that, her own teeth! This is no small thing, Mr. Stein. Once you’ve seen someone remove their teeth and put them in a glass, it’s a miracle—a death miracle. It’s all over after that.”
Seth smiled. “Right.” He didn’t have the energy for the usual back and forth, and Ira studied him for a moment.